


i

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He could number this easily enough.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	i

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Charlie, Don, and Numb3rs belong to Cheryl Heuton, Nicolas Falacci, and some people at CBS who aren't me.
> 
> Beta thanks to Iulia!
> 
> This story was first posted February 5, 2007.

As a kid, Charlie had habitually attached secret numerical values to things. The dresser in his room had five drawers, and its height and width were a ratio of three to two: (3 x 2) + 5 = 11. The nightstand, by the same formula, was 4. The value of the bookshelf was complicated and changeable, depending on the number of books on the shelves; he'd been relieved to learn the rudiments of algebra, so that he could define it as x + 5.

He'd never seriously attempted to apply numerical values to people. Even after he'd learned algebra there were far too many variables to ever account for properly; even inanimate objects got complicated if you tried to describe too many attributes. Still, he was aware sometimes of noting the change in a value, or of related values in some function.

The Charlie-and-Don function, for instance, had experienced wild variation over the course of thirty years. Distances--physical and otherwise--had widened and narrowed over and over and eventually had collapsed into this sweaty singularity.

Charlie settled his cheek against Don's shoulder, tracing his fingers over Don's ribs until Don's hand clamped down, punishingly tight. "Stop that," Don muttered into the top of his head. "Tickles."

"Sorry," Charlie mumbled, wriggling his fingers in Don's grip, and Don let up, letting his hand rest flat on Charlie's, holding it to Don's side.

Charlie smiled. This, now, he could number _this_ easily enough, when you came right down to it, stopped trying to pick out individual attributes and looked at the whole thing at once. This was _i_, the imaginary number, the square root of negative one. It shouldn't exist--there was no way it _could_ exist, there was no number that could be squared and come out negative. Charlie had tried to fathom how _i_ could be part of the mathematical universe, when he was younger; he'd tried to theorize some third state, some quasi-negativity that could be squared to produce a negative, but it was like trying to think in five dimensions, and in the end he just had to accept it. _i_ existed because they said it existed--because someone could think of it, could put it into words, and so this thing that shouldn't be possible came into the world.

Just like this--though it hadn't been so much a matter of putting it into _words_. Still, they'd thought of it and then it had been real, whether they could understand why or not, whether it fit into their number line or not, no matter what it did to their worldview.

Charlie grinned against Don's skin as it struck him, and he shook a little with silent laughter. _i_ for incest.

"What?" Don muttered, tightening his arm around Charlie. He sounded half asleep.

Charlie had tried once to explain to Don why the sofa was thirty-seven and the love seat was thirty-one and how that was _interesting_, two prime numbers making up the living room set. Don, nine years old, had listened patiently through the first three or four minutes before he said, "Charlie, it's a _couch_ and a _love seat_. They're not _numbers_, they're just _things_."

Don had never been interested in quantifying things. Don was interested in things going ahead and being what they were without having to talk about it.

Still smiling, Charlie pushed himself up over Don and kissed him until his own smile found its way onto Don's face. "Nothing," he whispered, long after Don had forgotten what he asked. "I'm just happy."

"All right then," Don said, eyes half-open and bright with a lazy smile. "So am I."

Charlie buried his face against Don's neck and laughed until he couldn't breathe.


End file.
